“You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.”

Well, that “in short” doesn’t really sounds right, what belongs to me is not just intellectual property, but also privacy, right, this sentence implies what belongs to you, is just intellectual property, and NOT the privacy. Alright.
“We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances apply: with your consent; with domain administrators; for external processing; for legal purposes.”

So, with any of the four circumstances apply, Google shares your personal information with other companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google.

1. With me clicking a hidden bottom says “I consent”, or “don’t consent and you will be blocked”
2. With your domain administrator, like the administrators of Google.com, yeah!
3. For external processing (what does external processing mean? John?), if another company wants to externally process your data, then Google share with them, Yeah again
4. If Google wants to suit you, or John, or suit themselves, or not suit themselves, or consult their lawyer, who happens to be a part-time scammer who wants your address. Yeah forever.

“When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps).”

Sorry me do understand you can store my content, but publicly perform? Publicly display? Why do you need to publicly perform or display MY CONTENT to operate, promote or improve your services? Can’t you just train a language model instead of displaying my content publicly? I know you are worried about getting into troubles, but you will be in larger trouble even if you have this policy. Because publicly display and distribute such content is simply evil, signing a contract with devil won’t make the action of the devil right. Can’t you just say “We will never publicly display, perform or distribute any content that can reveal the identity of the users”. Is that what you can’t do? I guess your NER system is good enough, just replace all the names with 0×99384 before “publicly displaying it”. Is that hard?

Google, you are over cautious. That’s doesn’t mean you are evil, but you are allowing yourself to falling into the evil side.

老彭的艰难岁月大约持续了一年半，同时，北大西门的局势也发生了变化。老丁任然坚持街头斗争，同时发展了电子商务。所谓电子商务无非一部小灵通。这时北大畅春园公寓开始有学生入住，土山也被铲平，因此生意出奇的好。街道上吃烤串的却以韩国人为主，中国人大多改在百事吉打牙祭。经过一年的积累，老彭有了东山再起的本钱。但是老彭并不想吃回头草，而是在清华西门边开了一家”彭氏西门鸡翅”。这家饭店租用的是工地边的临时建筑，也颇为简陋，但是老彭终于有了自己的根据地。酒香不怕巷子深，虽然此次远远没有北大西门繁华，但是却有不少人慕名从北京各处乘车来品尝这著名的西门鸡翅。老彭厉害之处是选择了清华西门开店。虽然西门鸡翅名声在外，但是却没有人说”北大西门鸡翅”。对于清华的童鞋来说，恐怕不愿意承认北大西门才是西门鸡翅的真正发源地。然而清华西门鸡翅的说法却又不完全错，毕竟老彭才是北大西门鸡翅的创始人。

从此，老彭的事业又一次辉煌起来，可以说是财源滚滚。那时我即将研究生毕业，正在申请出国，因为住在畅春园，而又在东门实验室工作的缘故两边都尝尝光顾。老彭和老丁这西门鸡翅的两大台柱，在街头和店堂分别奋斗着。显然老彭要成功得多。经过六年，老彭从一个成天需要躲避城管的街头摊贩，成为一家餐厅的厨师，又从厨师变成一文不名，连街头摆摊都没法摆的”主烤”，最后，终于拥有了自己的餐厅。在我看来，也算是一个不大不小的中国梦吧。

我最后一次去老彭的店，是在07年出国前不久。晚上十二点，店里仍然坐得很满，门外也摆满了座椅。老彭的几个徒弟在店外和厨房张罗着两个烤架。店门口烟熏火燎，横七竖八地停着自行车，人行道上居然还停了一辆大奔。老彭的老婆，依然热情地给你点菜上菜。而老彭坐在结账的吧台里，手里端着一杯小酒，一边收钱一边自斟自饮，满脸通红。时不时还哼哼小曲。这就是我所知的西门鸡翅历史。看大众点评网，彭氏西门鸡翅的评论居然有五六百条。然而一切都在2008年7月戛然而止。最后一条评论在那时发出，已经在国外的我不知道发生了什么，也许和奥运有关吧。

去年我回到帝都，帝都早已不是当年的摸样。虽然依然尘土飞扬，却再也看不到那批破败的平房。在颐和园路，北大西路一带，大大小小有不下七八家西门鸡翅，街头的摊贩是否还在，我无法考证，而那一家家光鲜的西门鸡翅中，老丁和老彭都在哪里？或许他们在奥运大遣返中，已经回了家乡？或许又是一个轮回，下一次的创业。

帝都这个大熔炉，每天都有人成功，有人失败。回想起当年共同闯荡中关村的屌丝们，如今都已经成为了高帅富。Qunar的哥们们现在应该都是mega millionaire 了。生存在北京之于老彭，恐怕比纽约之于我们更加艰难。当我们抱怨自己慢慢没有梦的时候，可曾想起西门鸡翅那辉煌的中国梦。

我的鸡翅是星辰大海

——莱因哈特∙冯∙罗严特拉姆

老彭失败了。三年后，他一手开创的西门鸡翅红遍了半边天，而他却被扫地出门，再无立锥之地。原来的芙蓉东路已经被新人占据，他要再想回去，也不可能了。百事吉冒了他的牌子，继续号称”正宗西门鸡翅”，可以说，老彭失去了一切。如果故事就这么完结了，那么我们的中国梦也就做完了，幸运的是老彭并没有放弃，尽管充满了荆棘，有梦的人终究是会成功的。

老彭失去了品牌和location，也没有足够的资本开店。无奈之下只有选择到北大东门附近居住。这里不同于西门一带，没有那么多学生宿舍，只有教学楼和实验室，唯一的客源，就是实验室熬夜的学生，所以老彭选择了晚上送餐。这个时期，老彭的老婆每天都会到学校里发名片。这个名片颇为搞笑，title是：”西门鸡翅主烤 彭廷玉”。背面是正面是订餐电话。那段时间我开始读研，正好在理科二号楼，所以经常从他那里订鸡翅。味道还是一流，可惜经过一段路途的运送，已经不如新烤出来的脆了。

老彭继续烤鸡翅，他老婆蹬自行车送餐，比起当年在土堆边上的非法摊位，恐怕还要辛苦百倍。据说他和老婆白天还要打别的工。每次我在凌晨一两点见到来送鸡翅的老彭的老婆，总还是充满着活力——也许是鸡翅的梦想在支撑着他们的奋斗，而这梦想也将给他们带来真正的财富。请期待下一回：清华的逆袭。

和城管战斗两年后，老彭的名声逐渐响亮起来。这很大程度上要归功于一塌糊涂。早年一塌糊涂还是一个小站，上线人数不过几百人，每天聊天无非要报告。不知道”报告”这个词现在年轻人还用不用，就是请客吃饭的意思。曾经一次，学生会主席周同学在西门鸡翅报告全版，到那一看，土山周围坐的人乌央乌央的，整个架势搁现在估计要维稳了。正当西门鸡翅在一塌糊涂打出名声的同时，一塌糊涂凭借贴图版和性版也在全国打出了名声。于是乎西门鸡翅入选北京三大鸡翅，一炮而红。芙蓉东路上顿时涌现出了无数西门鸡翅，而老彭却在这时登堂入室进了店，所在就是那个恩佑寺山门后面的”百事吉”。据说老彭从无证商贩到有证厨师，多亏了他的小舅子帮忙联系。从此老彭消失在百事吉的厨房里，而他老婆则在店里里外张罗。很明显的是，他们并没有成为百事吉的正式员工，烤串都是他老婆往外端，而其他的菜则由百事吉的服务员往外端。

老彭进驻百事吉的同时，冒牌的西门鸡翅如雨后春笋遍地开花，我数了数不下十家。至于现在传说中的老丁西门鸡翅（还有这么一篇文章在网上转载），在那时候根本还没有出现。文章作者以为老丁才是正宗的西门鸡翅，那显然是不了解情况的小dd了。老彭开始打天下的时候，西门根本没有别的鸡翅，甚至老彭转正之后，老丁也还没有出名。所以老彭是西门鸡翅的始祖是毫无疑问的。老彭在百事吉的日子，大约从2003年到2004年，可以说是老彭事业的第一个高峰。然而老彭的一个错误是没有坚持建立自己的品牌，让人知道他才是西门鸡翅的代表；而是帮百事吉打工。以至于下一回被百事吉扫地出门之后，甚至没有人相信他才是真的西门鸡翅。而百事吉在他在2004年年底左右被赶在之后，继续宣称自己是真的西门鸡翅。而现在烤鸡翅的，正是那个曾经帮助过老彭的小舅子。这让我想起了食神里的唐牛……

“我真是看不透你啊”。

1. Create a directory inside C:\Users\YOU\Skydrive, say C:\Users\YOU\Skydrive\Documents
2. Move files inside your old document directory into the newly created directory. (Attention: If dropbox directory is inside the document directory, you’d better change it to other location).
3. Delete the old document directory, say, C:\Users\YOU\Documents,
4. Create symbolic link by open command prompt, and type mklink /D C:\Users\YOU\Documents C:\Users\YOU\Skydrive\Documents, or if you are using MacOS/Linux, you can use command ln /s /Users/YOU/Skydrive/Documents /Users/YOU/Documents. You may notice the difference, in Windows, mklink command you need to put the location of link first, and the target of the link as the last parameter, but in MacOS/Linux, the target of the link comes first, then the location of the link.

Now, your document directory is synced happily with the service you choose. For your pictures, you may want to sync using Google Drive, and your movies with Dropbox, create more symbolic links on your machines. The same document directory can be synced without problem in both Windows and MacOS machines, because they are physically located in the folders that are synced by the services, but you can create symbolic links to them in any place you choose. On Windows it may be C:\User\YOU\Documents, on MacOS, /Users/YOU/Documents and Linux /home/YOU/Documents. All of them just sync, and you get the freedom to sync some folders with one service provider and some with the other.

But, you should not abuse symbolic link, refer to my article, do not create symbolic link inside directories that are synced. Also don’t link files synced by one service to another, thinking that you will get double backup. It may either give you a deadlock, wrong revision, or worse, a corrupted file. If you want to get double backup, use rsync or synctoy or any other folder synchronization tool on ONLY ONE OF YOU MACHINES.

P.S. Maybe sometime there will be a cloud over clouds that unify everything.

When you use a symbolic link, you are basically saying: OK, this file A is just a pointer to another file B, or, A and B are the same. So, you are not adding new data but a relationship to the database of the cloud storage. The problem is, can this relationship be represented correctly on the cloud? (EDIT: Dropbox etc doesn’t preserve the link, instead it treat the file as actual file, so when you sync to other computers, they become two files and the link is broken. That’s a case when relationship is not preserved, and render symbolic link inside the cloud storage useless). It may be (just may be, you don’t know when it breaks) possible for providers to preserve the relationship on the cloud but in practice, lots of problems may happen. Say, we do the following, we have two files and a relationship, and two users updated these two files separately, what happens? If the relationship will be represented correctly, then conflict will happen, if not, the symbolic links will simply break and you lost the sync between the two. Well, next, if the symbolic link points outside the cloud storage, what happens? In two computers, one running Windows and the other running Mac, you want to make a directory symbolic link to your pictures directory, so that they sync. So you did on Mac:

ln -s ~/Pictures ~/Dropbox/Pictures

and on Windows

mklink /D C:\Users\YOU\Documents\Dropbox\Pictures C:\Users\YOU\Pictures

Now you are confusing dropbox, which directory should “Pictures” points to? You can also make up more ways of screwing yourself up like ln -s .. my

In another scenario, you put file A in dropbox directory, and create a symbolic link B to A, dropbox doesn’t know they are the same file and sync to copies. In another computer, you edit A, and think that B will also be updated, but dropbox won’t do that, now even in the original computer, A and B are different and unrelated. If you are working in a team, other members working on A wont be aware of the change you made on B. Anyay, that’s not what you expected.

So now what? Am I confined use files inside dropbox directory? No. The guideline is, keep things simple for cloud storage, and you can do as things as fancy as you want outside the box. This is actually saying: Make symbolic links from outside, to files or directories inside cloud storage. Instead of using those commands I mentioned before and relies on cloud storage providers to resolve your symbolic links, you simply reverse the steps:

1. Move all files in your local directory you want to sync, e.g. “C:\Users\YOU\Pictures”, to dropbox directory. Note, move, not symbolic link!
2. Delete local directory. (Empty now)
3. Create symbolic link using mklink /D C:\Users\YOU\Pictures C:\Users\YOU\Documents\Dropbox\Pictures(Note: See, the direction is reversed)
4. On other machines you want to sync (the actual files are already synced), do the same: ln -s ~/Dropbox/Pictures ~/Pictures

Now we see a happy ending, files sync happily between your Windows and Mac machines. And it doesn’t matter if you are using dropbox, skydrive or Google Drive. You can even sync some of your files using dropbox, some using skydrive, and some Google Drive. Who cares, they just work.

Conclusion:

• Don’t ever use symbolic links inside cloud storage, use them from outside.
• The methodology is that: keep the data on the cloud, and keep the relationships locally.
• You will be happier if you do that.

老彭的成功，很大程度上归功于他的老彭。老彭个子不高，也不壮，脸上棱角分明。如果你去工地，应该可以很容易地找出几十个老彭一样的农民工兄弟。听口音是河北人。他老婆个子似乎比他还要大些，长得嘛，怎么说呢，五官端正却没有棱角，挺容易亲近那种。这一对就是中国最最普通的匹夫匹妇，来自某某农村，除了种地没有别的一技之长。老彭的手艺不知道来自何方，说起来烤串也不是什么高深学问，但是就有烤得好烤的差的。老彭的鸡翅，皮酥肉嫩，似焦未焦，在露天的炭火上即兴烤出这样的水平，并不是所有人都能做到的。老彭发家以后，西门一带冒名的西门鸡翅有十几家之多，而真的烤得好，除了老彭也就只有老丁一家。但是老丁家的味道太重，说实在的我怀疑用料是不是不新鲜。所以尽管日后老彭经历低谷，无立锥之地，我还是电话定他的鸡翅。再到后来老彭把失去的都拿回来，但是店却开到清华西门外。从此北大西门鸡翅变成了清华西门鸡翅，许多人认为他不正宗，我还是经常为他宣传、正名。

扯远了，说道老彭创业的开始，可以说是筚路褴褛。前文说到拆迁队灭绝了前西门鸡翅时代的畅春园小吃街，留下座尘土飞扬的小土山和一间破水泥房。老彭和他的老婆租了水泥房的小半边，看起来就能放下一张床的。每晚老彭就在门里头烤鸡翅，他老婆在街边招呼客人。记得我第一次好像是跟99的猴子他们一起去的，老彭的老婆用浓重的河北口音招呼大家到土山后面找块平地坐下，很干练的给放好塑料马扎，端上一个装了炭火的烤架，用来保温。时不时还拉拉家常，说的什么早已记不得了，总之很快就成了熟人，有时还能赠送一些鸡翅。有几次城管出现，老彭和他老婆落荒而逃，我们也拿了马扎跑开，等城管走了再把马扎送回来。那段日子，宿舍的哥几个每到了熄灯，准时翻出楼门，奔西门打牙祭。一人两三个鸡翅，五六根羊肉串，配上一颗手雷（就是一瓶二两的那种二锅头）。

月光，尘土，鸡翅，屌丝。记忆中的鸡翅也许并不是什么珍馐，却是我们满面尘埃的青春。

畅春园的前生今世

出北大西门（高考辅导书封面最常用的那个，有石狮子的门）向南不到50米，有个被铁栏杆围起来的山门。据说是雍正皇上为了纪念母亲建的恩佑寺的山门。寺庙依然不存。山门后面的一条东西向小路叫芙蓉东路。路边就是畅春园，而顺着路一直往西，过了万泉河，就是娄斗桥。当年娄斗桥周围都是低矮的平房，看起来颇为破败。其中有一个大院，远看像拖拉机修理厂，走到近前仔细看，门牌上写着：”北京大学人口及社会学研究所”。别看这个门牌和大院破破烂烂，在中国文学史上也是赫赫有名。传说当年王小波同学从匹兹堡回国后，就在这个大院里教授SAS和Matlab。（不愧是留过洋的，90年代初会SAS和Matlab也算IT精英了。）直到2007年左右这地方还是破烂不堪，位置也堪称犄角旮旯，难怪小波在这里会写出《红拂夜奔》。总觉得那个充满尿骚味的长安城会不会就是以这个破地方为蓝本，总之当年我们喝完二锅头后在附近不知撒过多少泡尿。

芙蓉东路原本有很多小吃店和酒吧，颇为繁华，我们常去的一家叫马兰拉面，其特色就是烤串。两位新疆师傅，烤羊肉绝对是一绝，特别是三块钱一根的肉筋，有半斤重，得拿吹风机对着炭火吹，扇子根本不管事。另外还有几个酒吧，基本都是球迷俱乐部。前西门鸡翅时代的畅春园，我记忆最深的就是2000年亚洲杯中国对日本的半决赛，祁宏杨晨荡气回肠的两个进球，以及日本队在范大炮帮助下的逆转伴随着肉筋的香味和”fzy傻逼”的喊声一起留在了记忆最深处。不久芙蓉东路就拆迁了，这批小吃店一个也没留下。后来02年世界杯预选赛我记得就是在牛教看的。前西门鸡翅时代的畅春园的历史结束了，变成了一堆残砖碎瓦。此后几年不知何故却一直没有在拆掉的旧址重建，也没有铺上草，甚至连渣土都没有全部运走，以至于在颐和园路和芙蓉东路交界处形成了一座小土山，没到刮风的时候，尘土飞扬。在小山的对面，神奇地留下了一座小砖房，老彭的创业，就是从这座小山和这个小砖房开始的。至于两位新疆师傅，其中一位好像到中关村蹬三轮车去了，可惜了一把好手艺。（待续）